Pittsburgh Money Moves: ARM makes $2.9M bet on new AI and robotics projects

Millions of dollars flowed into Pittsburgh-area startups and projects this month. 

Government at several levels funded projects committed to bolstering manufacturing and supercomputing. Six additional advanced manufacturing projects received grants from the ARM Institute, and Comcast invested in providing internet to more members of the community in Allegheny County and the surrounding areas. 

Read on for details on those transactions, plus other Money Moves, after the chart showing which companies are hiring in Pittsburgh this month.

ARM awards $2.9M across six emerging tech projects

The Advanced Robotics for Manufacturing (ARM) Institute awarded six different technology projects across various sectors. 

The projects include multi-modal inputs for AI robotics in manufacturing, rapid re-tasking and robot agility, multi-robot, multi-human collaboration and virtual commissioning of advanced robotic systems. All stem from a call for ideas from ARM’s 400-member organization. 

“These projects epitomize the importance of enabling collaboration between diverse organizations to address areas of need in manufacturing,” said Chuck Brandt, ARM Institute chief technology officer.

Director of the National Economic Council Lael Brainard recently visited the institute to see demonstrations of robotics designed for various manufacturing functions.

$150k for digital equity in Allegheny County

Comcast awarded four Pittsburgh-based nonprofits thousands of dollars to support their efforts to boost digital connectivity. 

The African American Chamber of Commerce of Western Pennsylvania, Neighborhood Allies, STEM Coding Lab, and Veterans Leadership Program of Western Pennsylvania all split the $150,000 grant. 

The investment also includes 176 free “Lift Zones” for internet access on the go, and bringing internet to more than 10,000 homes in the surrounding area. 

“Awarding grants to Pittsburgh-area purpose-driven organizations allows our community to excel through high-speed Internet and effective training,” said Kevin Broadhurst, vice president of government and regulatory affairs for Comcast’s Keystone Region.

Supercomputing program lands $4.9M federal grant

The National Science Foundation will fund a $4.9 million upgrade to the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center’s Bridges-2 project. 

Bridges-2 tech has yielded major accomplishments in recent years, including developing a cancer diagnosis tool and creating a map of the Milky Way. 

“Augmenting this capability with H100-based [graphic processing unit] nodes will significantly improve the performance of our community’s [machine learning] and [high-performance computing] workloads,” said Sergiu Sanielevici, director of support for scientific applications at PSC and principal investigator in the Bridges-2 project.

The upgrades to the supercomputer will specifically help the researchers work toward breakthroughs in topics like AI, healthcare, sustainability and more. 

More Money Moves: 

• Autonomous vehicle company Aurora Innovation announced an underwritten public offering totaling $483 million. Aurora posted 26 jobs in the last month, according to Technical.ly’s Tech Economy Dashboard. 
• Pittbsurgh-based NOMA AI, a clinical decision-support platform, joined the Cedar-Sinai tech accelerator. Each company gets $100,000, plus other business support resources. 
• Pennsylvania gave the New Kensington Advanced Manufacturing Park $6 million to attract new business, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reported. The developers will use the funds to offset demolition costs and upgrade utilities.
• The US Department of Transportation awarded local startup Velo AI $200,000 toward developing tech that collects data on bike-car collisions.